This fic is very near and dear to my heart. It helped me through the grieving process of finishing America's greatest novel, and I like to pretend that this is what happened, and that "Scarlett" (The MOST insulting sequel of all time) is not ;)

Please enjoy!

He did not love her. Not anymore, anyway. He wasn't transfixed by her sharp emerald eyes. He was not addicted to watching her midnight locks slowly tumble down, splay out in waves and leave goose bumps on the bare flesh of her back when she let it down while changing for bed. Scarlett O'Hara most certainly did not hold his beating heart in the palm of her tiny, pale, and well-manicured hand. The heart to speak of, did not beat for her and her alone.

No- Rhett Butler was not in love with Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler. He just pretended to be, to keep the gossip down.

He pretended to crave her touch in public, when they were out at gatherings. Rhett would pull her indecently close to his imposingly tall and muscularly built frame and keep her there the whole evening, adamantly refusing to let her dance with anyone else. Scarlett's head would rest right on his heart, and that fact did not at all make it beat faster...No, the never ceasing dancing was to blame for that. The slender arms that wrapped around his midsection tightly did not remind him of better times, when they had held each other in the same way in the privacy of their shared bedroom. The man who was not in love pretended to adore roaming his hands along her arms, hips and waist, while they danced or just stood and mingled. Only to keep the gossip down.

On nights when they were alone in the house, the children in bed, servants nowhere to be found, and her sitting across from him drinking coffee, he told himself all of this. Then she would look meekly up at him, abandoning her belle of the county ways and begging him wordlessly to touch her again, never matter how brief. And he did. Only to keep the gossip down.

As he would stand from his chair, abandoning his whiskey on the table and striding toward her with a determination that rivaled a hungry lions, she would inwardly scream in agonizing impatience. He would hold his arm out to her, and when she took it, pressing her tiny frame against his side desperately, (Not that either of them noticed) tucking her hand tightly into the bend of his elbow and resting her head right below his shoulder, he did not sigh of relief. No- Rhett Butler sighed in pity. Pity for the poor girl who was in love with him when she could not have him.

They would mount the stairs together, side by side, broken soul by broken heart, and they would wordlessly agree to remain silent until necessary, in a pathetic attempt to spare themselves their dignity. When they finally reached her room, he would kiss her hand before turning to leave. Without fail, every night, one of them would break.

He would spin around rapidly, coat tail flying, to the sight of a softly closing door, cry out softly for her to wait, and the door would open again before she flung herself into his awaiting arms.

Other times, as he was retreating to the solitude of his room across the hall, she would watch for a nanosecond before whispering his name in a quiet, longing, pleading way.

"Rhett-" She would hesitantly drawl.

She rarely got past this point in the perfectly rehearsed and executed performance before he would bend her in his grip and assault her lips with his.

When they woke in the mornings, her silky strands of hair wrapped around his throat, his arms firmly around her mid-section, and breaths softly mingling, he would drop his face into her neck, inhale softly and pretend to be pretending.

Eventually the game they played would end. He knew it, and she knew it too. Eventually true feelings would surface, and the denial would be forced away. This dangerously consuming war of emotions would continue until it could no longer do so- and they were happy to let it. As long as it kept the gossip down.